Have COVID symptoms but test negative? Here’s what to do
Here’s what to do if you strongly suspect you have COVID-19 but get negative results on rapid tests.
A few weeks back, my partner and I attended a wedding where, it turns out, love wasn’t the only thing in the air. Within 36 hours, a dozen attendees reported positive COVID-19 tests—which means they may have been infected before the wedding. At least a dozen more positives followed.
Soon, I started to feel a tickle in my throat and my partner started coughing. We were able to lock down for the week with work-from-home, grocery deliveries, and isolation from each other. I didn’t get sicker, but he did, with a phlegmy cough, congestion, and a slight fever. We both took several rapid tests and I also used Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests, which are more sensitive.
Neither of us ever tested positive. But we wonder whether we still “had COVID” in some sense, and it was a hard question to investigate on our own.
Fortunately, in my job, I get to talk to scientific experts—and who better to tap for infectious disease knowledge than Benjamin Pinsky, a Stanford School of Medicine professor of pathology and of medicine who works in clinical practice, and researches and designs infectious disease diagnostics and testing?
Pinsky, medical director for the Clinical Virology Laboratory for Stanford Health Care and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, answered all the questions that raced through my mind during quarantine.
The main takeaway? Take a deep breath, do your research, be honest and thoughtful about your situation, and do the best you can for yourself and others.
“It’s important for folks to take stock of their own risk and their personal responsibility to others with the information they have at the time,” says Pinsky. “But it’s hard to make these sorts of decisions with imperfect information—that’s the challenge.”
The following Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity and consistency:
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